“I ask you to affirm your
willingness to enter the covenant of marriage and to share all the joys and
sorrows of this new relationship, whatever the future may hold.” --Traditional marriage vows
August 18th.
Last year
that was the most popular day for weddings in the United States, a day when almost
30,000 couples said “I do”. Think June is the most popular time to get married?
Nope. It’s now September. In 2018 more than 165,000 couples walked down the aisle
in the ninth month, at an average cost of $33,391 dollars per wedding. What is
the number of unusable, unwearable, unreturnable bridesmaid dresses leftover the
day after all those weddings? Those fuchsia or sea foam or bright cotton candy pink
fashion faux pas? Infinite. I know this. I’ve officiated at more than 300
weddings in almost
thirty years of being an “I do” professional.
And yes, I
still absolutely love doing a wedding. Being there. Seeing love.
As I stand
at the front of a hushed sacred church sanctuary or in the middle of a green meadow
or on the back porch of a golf country club with cries of “FORE!” in the
distance or in a living room with just the couple and me. Weddings are
beautiful and ancient and hopeful and angst filled events, amazing rites of passage
and of promises made in this human life. Weddings remind us that love still
wins, still tries, still strives, that love connects and love unites.
Weddings
go on. Love goes on.
Not that
in almost thirty years of helping folks tie the knot, I haven’t witnessed a few
weird and wacky moments. Like a wedding where the groom and his Dad almost came
to blows. Why Dad chose two minutes before the big event to tell his son how he
really felt about his future daughter
in law, I’ll never know. The time a Grandmother fainted, just toppled over in
the pew and so the paramedics arrived in a huge red firetruck with sirens
blaring and the organist played music while we all waited and prayed and…she
was okay!! PHEW! I’ve seen a terror filled bride and groom hang on for dear
life in a horse drawn carriage as an ornery equine bucked and kicked. One bride
arrived 45 minutes late as her guests melted in an August inferno. My most
touching memory? A woman dying of cancer marrying the love of her life, “’til
death do us part.”
Weddings
teach us that love stays. Love stands.
Human love survives in spite of whatever else is going on in this world, all
the bad stuff, the cruel stuff, the mean stuff, all of our fears about the
future. Perhaps that is what makes a wedding so miraculous. One person says to another, “Whatever may
come, I will be with you. Whatever the future holds, we will meet it all together,
as a team, as partners, as one.”
That’s why
folks still get married in war time, in hard times, days when things feel shaky.
They still have hope for better days ahead. That’s why people tie the knot even
though in the past they may have had their hearts broken wide open. They still believe
that love is possible. They still desire the companionship of one special soul
in spite of yesterday.
We need
weddings and we need the love these witness to: in good times, in anxious times
like these, in all times. Love shared by couples and love found in families and
clans and communities and even nations: this covenant love binds us all together
in sacred vows, in promises that commit us one to another. We all say “I do!”
in a way and the world is a stronger and a better place for our declarations of
fidelity. We care about another person and this life is more tender, gentler, and
just more fun.
So, God
bless us all as we move into this season of weddings. God bless overcooked
chicken and the Chicken Dance. God bless
teary fathers and proud mothers, remarried couples, same sex couples, couples
that are so young and couples that are so old too. God bless high
religious services in houses of worship and laid-back services in a meadow and
quiet moments at City Hall with the clerk.
It’s all
good because it’s all love and it’s all a gift from God and it’s ours’ for the
taking and ours’ for the witnessing, whatever the future may hold.
Let
tomorrow bring whatever it will. But today? We love.
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